So, NAB 2006 is over, and though I didn’t get out of the Abel booth for more than a couple of hours, I did manage to see a few interesting things (that I’m at liberty to reveal. Heh.). Some impressions follow, in no particular order.

Panasonic
There were a few new cameras on show from Panasonic. The two most interesting (to me) were the HDX-900 and the HC-1500.

The HDX-900 is essentially a multi-standard, HD version of the SDX-900. It is switchable between 59.94 Hz and 50Hz (for European deliverables). At 59.94 Hz it’ll do 720P at 24 (actually 23.976) fps, 30 (actually 29.97) fps and 60 (you get the idea) fps, and record 1080i while exposing at the same frame rates (which gives you 24P, 30P and 60i). In 50Hz mode it’ll do 25P and 50P in 720, or 25P and 50i in 1080.

The HC-1500 is a tiny box camera that does what the HDX-900 does and adds in the Varicam functions as well (Film-rec mode and variable frame rates).

Not a camera, and not made by Panasonic, but being shown in the Panasonic booth was HD Log from Imagine Products. HD Log is video logging software for the Mac, which now natively supports the MXF files created by Panasonic’s P2 cameras. If you are shooting (or posting) a lot of P2 footage, you will want this program.

Sony
As usual the Sony booth was about the size of a city block, which unfortunately means that by the time I left I had already forgotten what I had seen at the beginning. Bear in mind that it was my seventh day in Vegas by the time I got there.

On show was the F-900R, the lead-free upgrade to the F-900. In addition to being smaller, lighter and quieter (it’s minus one fan), it has built-in HD-SDI and options for down-converted output and a cache card (for pre-record). Expect to see a lot of rental houses upgrading their inventory.

An upgraded HDC-1500 now replaces the F-950. It’s basically just like an F-950 but can now do 60P (in 4:2:2). Oh, it can also do 720P. A camera more squarely aimed at the film-making/episodic-television market is a camera who’s name I missed but looks like a mutant Panavision Genesis. Unlike the Genesis it has a prism block with 2/3″ imagers, but it shares the Genesis’ ability to wear an SRW-1 HDCAM-SR recorder as a pseudo magazine, either on the top or back of the camera. Interesting.

Sony also has a couple of little box-cameras (though not quite as small as Panasonic’s). There’s a 1/2″ one and a 2/3″ one. I saw the 1/2″ one over a year ago, but I think the 2/3″ one is new.

For XDCAM users, Flip4Mac was showing the new version of Flip4Mac MXF which now (ahem, soon) supports XDCAM HD. It even does proxies.

Thomson/Grass Valley
OK, I didn’t actually make it to the Thomson booth, but there were a bunch of cameras around the show. I got a chance to see the Infinity camera at the Canon booth. I can’t really testify to much about the camera, but I can say it is definitely one of the sexier-looking cameras out there.

The Really Cool Stuff
When I was in High School, I remember playing with an incredibly cool animation program on an Amiga. It was entirely spline-based, and really easy to use. I didn’t know what it was called, and over the years I’ve periodically wished that there was something like that program on the Mac. If I actually did animation I’m sure I would have known that that very software has in fact been on the Mac for some time - but not running in the right circles I just found out on Thursday. The program is now called Animation Master, and is considerably more sophisticated than it was in the Amiga days. I’m still kicking myself for not buying at the show for the special show price (I had to run back to the booth, and the show was over before I had a chance to leave again), but fortunately the regular price is only $299, so I expect to playing with it some time this coming week. I can’t really begin to describe the software — just check out the site.

Last, but certainly not least, is what to me was by far the coolest, most amazing camera at the show — the Phantom. Vision Research has made a series of high speed digital cameras for years, primarily for industrial and scientific use. They now have two new cameras for the creative market. One has a 35mm-sized frame at 1080P resolution that will go up to 1000fps. A second camera has a 65mm-sized frame with 4K resolution that will do 150fps (at 4K — with higher frame rates available at reduced resolution). They use standard film lenses, and have on-board RAM-based recording (of course it is necessary to download the footage after every shot, but compared to shooting high-speed film this is quite painless). The footage from the camera is amazing. There is a demo reel on their website. I can watch it over and over — I think I was hypnotized in front of it for over 10 minutes at the show. I would have stayed longer if someone wasn’t pulling on my shirt.